Facebook and Bango Join Forces for Mobile Payments

Facebook has teamed up with Bango to provide mobile payment services on the social network with the aim to encourage smartphone purchases.

Facebook already make an impressive income from microtransactions from within applications and games as well as advertising. However not much of that comes from mobiles, which is where Bango comes in.

Bango already handles the payment platforms for Blackberry and Opera app stores, so it's got some serious experience at providing smartphone based payments. It's also likely to draw in customers that might have been wary about paying Facebook directly by putting their payment information on the social network. Doing so through a third party with experience in handling customer details securely, would likely be a load off their mind.

While Facebook hasn't commented on the move, it's expected that this deal heralds a push by the social network into the mobile game. A large portion of Facebook users do so from their mobile devices, so it makes perfect sense that it would want to expand into that territory.

PCWorld has a short comment from Bango's higher ups about the deal, though they are similarly hushed, saying that it's currently: "too early in the relationship to accurately forecast the level of business which it may generate."

One of the other big advantages that Bango could bring to Facebook is its stat tracking ability. This would allow for an aggregating of mobile purchases far more than is currently available. Likely this would lead to an even greater and more targeted push by the social network to cater for smartphones and other mobile users.